London (England) -- Fiction; Theater -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"You’re always so thoughtful, and so loyal," she said. "I’m getting old
and you remain steadfast. It seems such an irony of fate that I can’t
love you as you deserve. Although Hugh has no claim on my feelings or
my memory, I can’t forget him. I give you so little, Leonard. One day,
perhaps, some girl will love you worthily, and make up for my meanness."
He smiled down at her, shaking his head.
"Keep those roses," he said. "I’ll get Miss Delamere some more."
"No, no, I want her to have them. Put your card in. Shall I write the
address?"
Woolf was with Maggy when the post brought her the roses. He cut the
string and stood looking on while she removed the tissue wrappings.
"Oh, roses!" she cried delightedly. "Who can have sent them?"
They had traveled as well as could be expected of cut flowers, but they
were flagging a little for want of water.
Woolf pounced on the card that accompanied them.
"’Lord Chalfont,’" he read, and scowled at the club address in the
corner. "Damn his impudence sending you flowers! And how the devil
does he know your address?" he demanded angrily.
Maggy was perturbed at this outburst.
"You needn’t mind, Fred," she said placably.
"Did you tell him where you lived?"
"Of course not. You needn’t go back to that. You said you’d forgiven me
for going to lunch with Mrs. Lambert that day. You know I met him
there, and that’s all there is in it. He must have known that I—I
hadn’t been well—through Lexie, and sent the flowers out of politeness."
She turned the lid of the box up. "The address is in a woman’s hand:
Mrs. Lambert’s. There’s nothing to look so furious about."
The fact that flowers should come to Maggy from a comparative stranger
would not, of itself, have irritated Woolf. She often received flowers
now, and from men she had never met. Her good looks and prominence at
the Pall Mall accounted for this. Woolf made no objection. The
admiration of other men for her rather enhanced her desirability in his
eyes. He took it as a tribute to his own good taste in having secured
possession of her. But Chalfont’s name affected him in much the same
manner as a red rag does a bull. It blinded him with rage because it
stood for everything that he himself was devoid of—birth, breeding,
nobility of nature—and, moreover, because it was that of the man who had
humbled him by having him turned out of the select club to which he
aspired to membership. That incident had touched Woolf on the raw. It
was much as if he had been told that he was unworthy of association with
gentlemen.
He picked up the roses and pitched them into the fireplace.
"Damned cheek, sending you a few pennyworth of dead flowers!" he flared
out. "I’ll go and buy you some live ones!"
Maggy did not protest. She had learnt discretion with Woolf. He flung
out of the flat. Half-an-hour later a messenger boy came with a
magnificent bouquet of freshly-cut Catherine Mermets.
Maggy was so happy arranging them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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